Page 56 of My Dark Ever After
He stalked toward me. Automatically, I backed up until my knees hit the end of the bed and my momentum forced me to sit down. He kept a foot of space between us, but it felt superheated, the earth between us about to split apart.
“Do you think I dreamt as a boy of being some gangster with a gun and chains? Do you think this was what I aspired to when I went to Oxford? Sometimes life is cruel and we must be cruel in order to survive it, Guinevere. How can you, a survivor of your own kind of hell, condemn me for that?”
“I am not condemning you, Raffa,” I said, surging to my feet so that we were pressed torso to torso and I had to drop my head back between my shoulders to snarl up at him. “I am just saying, if you wanted to, you could stop it. The killing, the lies, the criminality. You could come clean.”
His laugh was harsh, like something put through a meat grinder.
“I have told you, I will never be clean. Even if I left it all behind and went with you to America, I would still have lived the life I did as a mafioso. The hands that touched you at night would never be unsoiled, and the soul you’d claim to love would never be without the darkness it needed to do what had to be done to protect my loved ones.”
“You like it, then,” I pressed, already knowing the truth but needing to hear it again anyway. My hand slapped over his heart. “The killing. The lies. Going against the law.”
“I love it,” he seethed, leering down at me with a snarl on his mouth that should have been terrifying but was instead bizarrely beautiful. “I love watching those who would hurt me and mine be snuffed out like a light. I go to bed easily each night knowing they won’t come for any one of us ever again. I love being cleverer than the police and the government, sneering in their faces when they sniff around looking for tells they’ll never find.”
He lifted me in his arms so abruptly, I let out a cry. Suddenly, we were at eye level, his arm banded under my ass to keep me high enoughto look into that seething, cold gaze, straight to the ninth circle of Dante’s hell, where Satan himself reigned from his throne.
“I did not want this life, but there was a part of me born to thrive in it, and I am not capable of turning it off. I might be tempted to give up everything for you,stella cadente, but not when I am not sure if you love the real me. Dante spent his entire life worshipping a woman he did not really know, projecting onto her all the things he desired most in a partner because it was safe to do so. I will not be just an ideal to you.”
He took my lower lip between his teeth in a savage bite that rent the skin and made blood pool between us. With his eyes open and locked to mine, he licked up the metallic tang and then slicked his tongue over mine to share the taste.
“I do not want a meek lover or a girl who is happy to turn a blind eye. I want someone brave and bold enough to take my hand even when it is blood soaked, even when what I do is wrong. If you cannot do that, Guinevere, I will go to the palazzo in Florence and stay away until I can be sure you are safe, and then I will send you home.”
“I told you,” I said with an edge of desperation, hands sinking into his hair when he tried to pull away. “I do not think you are a monster. I see the tenderness in you.”
“But what if I am? A beautiful monster. And Guinevere,” he whispered against my mouth. “What if you are too?”
His kiss tasted of blood and ash, something dark dredged up from the deep. I felt like Proserpina kissing Pluto, tasting life and death, riches and devastation, all in one set of beautifully formed lips.
Just as I was losing myself to the embrace, he tore his mouth from mine, sat me on the mattress, and planted one hand on my chest to push me down onto the bed.
By the time I landed, the door was closing firmly behind him, and I was left alone with the taste of blood and Raffa on my lips.
Chapter Thirteen
Raffa
When I went downstairs the next morning after a sleepless night, I was surprised to see Guinevere already awake and sparring with Ludo outside the kitchen window as I made an espresso. The gunshot wound had been a through and through without hitting any major organs, but he still had his side wrapped, and he was moving carefully to protect his left torso. It was not his first bullet, and it would not be his last. It was impossible to expect Ludo or any of mysoldatito take any kind of bed rest unless they were unconscious or unable to walk.
“They do that every day,” Carmine said as he trailed into the kitchen in an immaculate three-piece suit. Even I did not dress so formally at the villa, instead wearing trousers and a thin cashmere sweater the same color as the Chianti wine we had drunk last night.
I watched as Guinevere ducked under one of Ludo’s meaty fists and planted a jab to his kidney. Even though I could not hear them, I could see Ludo laugh and give her a fist bump at the move. Beginning a new sequence, he seemed to be teaching her to climb a bigger opponent by bracing a foot on his thigh to get enough height to land a hit to his face.
“She mentioned she had taken some MMA classes in Michigan, but she seems proficient,” I admitted as heat kindled in my gut.
She was fierce as hell in black spandex, taking on mysoldatolike she had been born to do it. Even though she was slight, she was quick, easily evading the bigger man’s slower movements.
“Saw you have a tiff on the dance floor last night. Everything okay?”
I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face before shooting him a look. “Why is it never easy with women?”
Carmine guffawed. “You find the answer to that question, you’d save a lot of men a lot of issues. Guinevere, though, well, you did it to yourself, boss. Should’ve been honest the moment you started to fall for her.”
“It took me by surprise. I was in love before I could guard against it.” I downed my espresso and turned away from the window. “Did you set up the meeting with Drita?”
“This afternoon at five,” he confirmed. “You wanna head out now? Leo asked me to tell you he went into Rome for a meeting for the Romano Group today, so he’s out.”
“Where are Renzo and Martina?”
Carmine pulled a face that made me chuckle.
